Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday March 16, 2010 @03:45PM
from the friend-of-the-devil dept.

SpuriousLogic passes along this excerpt from the ChiTrib: "The Feds are on Facebook. And MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter, too. US law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting. ... The document... makes clear that US agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs, and video clips. Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects' alibis by comparing stories told to police with tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree... can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries." The FoIA lawsuit was filed by the EFF, which has posted two documents obtained from the action, from the DoJ and Internal Revenue (more will be coming later). The rights group praises the IRS for spelling out limitations and prohibitions on deceptive use of social media by its agents — unlike the DoJ. The US Marshalls and the BATFE could not find any documents related to the FoIA request, so presumably they have no guidelines or prohibitions in this area.

If you need a leaked document to know that spies are spying, you fail at life. Obviously information-gathering agencies will deploy personnel wherever there are large amounts of potentially useful information to be gathered.

"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were REAL men, women were REAL women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small furry creatures from Aplha Centauri." - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

N.B.: That *DOESN'T* mean I think that it's reasonable for them to be able to snoop on my e-mail, or anything I didn't intentionally make public. But for them to look at publicly posted information is quite reasonable, even if they are pretending to be someone else.

If you need a leaked document to know that spies are spying, you fail at life.

"you fail at life" -- What's with the juvenile hyperbole? The basis of empiricism is confirmation of hypotheses. It's good to get detailed confirmation of (an almost certain) suspicion. And the detail is what is interesting here.

p.s. It wasn't a leaked document. It was two documents released under a FOI request.

You joke on this, but what is the difference between an agent questioning you in real life and online? They are required to identify themselves in person, are they not? Why should online be any different?

Are Police Allowed to Lie?The question of whether or not the police may lie during the course of their work goes hand in hand with the question of entrapment.

It is well accepted that deception is often "necessary" to catch those who break the law. There is no question that police officers are allowed to directly mislead and/or deceive others about their identity, their law enforcement status, their history, and just about anything else, without breaking the law or compromising their case. Conversely, it is illegal for an ordinary citizen to lie to the police in many jurisdictions.

They may lie, but they aren't supposed to forge documents. They also aren't granted carte blanche to break TOS and therefore "hack" into any website they like. Does Facebook grant a TOS exception for law enforcement? It is still against the law to gain access to a computer through fraud isn't it? Yeah... how about that, it turns out written law isn't the only law. I'm shocked, how about you?

It is well accepted that deception is often "necessary" to catch those who break the law. There is no question that police officers are allowed to directly mislead and/or deceive others about their identity, their law enforcement status, their history, and just about anything else

They also aren't granted carte blanche to break TOS and therefore "hack" into any website they like.

If you're referring to these sections in the Facebook TOS:

You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.

...

You will not provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.

.. then I would have a couple counter-arguments. First, I acknowledge that, yes, they would be in violation of the TOS, that's obvious from the above statements. But, if you're saying that misrepresenting yourself on Facebook is a violation of the terms, then there are many, many Facebook users which are in violation of this. I'm not going to say it's "most" or give some arbitrary number, but you've got to admit that a large portion of

(1) Police are allowed to lie. The most common example is in interrogations and interviews. One of the most successful techniques for eliciting a confession from a suspect is confronting them with evidence against the suspect. The police will do this with both false and true evidence. The false evidence (pretending they have evidence) may be slightly less effective than true evidence, IIRC, but both are common interrogation techniques. Source: Lao's "Inside the Interrogation Room." Google it. Personally, I think it's one of the main reasons that we have a huge segment of society that really hates the police--it's not because the police are arresting them, it's because to most people, a lie is unprofessional and insulting, and the police use them all the time. It's a problem, because officers do a lot of really good work and are often very professional. I think every time I've encountered a police officer, they've been polite and professional. But many people I've known have had the opposite experience.

(2) You are usually allowed to lie to a cop, but you shouldn't. It IS a crime to lie to a Federal Agent, IIRC, but in most states I don't think it's a crime to lie to a police officer. But if you're arrested for something and you go to trial, you're going to have to explain why you lied to the cop. And a cop can ALWAYS find something to arrest you with. Good luck getting the jury to believe you after you've been caught in a lie. "So you lied to the officer?" "Yes." "But that means you're a liar, doesn't it?" "Er..." "So you're story is you lie sometimes to police officers, but you don't lie to juries?"

(3) Police are also allow to do pretty much anything a member of the public can do, and some things a member of the public can't, to pursue a criminal investigation. For example, in... Wisconsin, I think... police officers can do what would be considered identity theft if someone else did it.

(4) In the South, police can do whatever they want. This isn't true legally, but sometimes it's true in fact. (Although you can always fight them in court, after.) They may be more helpful if you're white (I actually saw them helping a woman change her tire!) but more likely to pull you out of the car and threaten you at shotgun point for being both black and in their town. (Happened to someone I know.) Although these are generalizations; there are really wonderful police officers all over, as there are really horrible ones in many places. You get encounters with good cops and bad cops everywhere.

Mod parent up! This situation is more like an undercover agent befriending a suspect to learn information than him wiretapping his phone or searching his house. If they were subpoenaing Facebook or Twitter for private information, than it would require a warrant. But friending them with a fake account (which they could reject) or looking at their public profiles is nothing that a normal person couldn't do.

"Nobody wants to be charged with a crime, let alone convicted. I did everything I could to try and remain without charge. Lying to a police officer is totally without legal repercussions, and as they lie frequently in interview (by their own admission) lying to them is also morally fine with me. In court, however, I am under oath. There's a word for lying under oath, and it doesn't apply when you're not in court."

Exactly. People who are stupid enough to fall for it deserve what they get.

This isn't the government going behind your back, putting you under covert surveillance. It's completely in the open. A friend of mine used to work for the MA state police, in the computer forensics unit. He was amazed at the number of gang members who would just openly accept his friend request on Facebook, which would lead to him quietly beavering away to figure out the social network of the gang, where they met, what they got up to. Sneaky? Perhaps, but not illegal.

If they were going through some kind of back door to read peoples private messages on forums etc then I'm be against this but it looks like they're doing the equivalent of going and reading what you've posted up on the wall of the local community centre.

However, the government should not be taking advantage of stupidity to undermine our rights. It is one thing for an agent to communicate with people who are already under investigation -- such as with your state police friend who communicates with gang members -- but it is an entirely different story when the government starts randomly probing into people's lives. The line is very, very fine here...

We're not talking about the police asking Facebook to hand over server storage so they can browse at their leisure. We're talking about government agents using Facebook or Twitter the exact same way that you or I would use it. There's nothing wrong with that.

I suppose that it's possible someone could have an issue with possible entrapment, but I can't see where there's a privacy issue just because you don't think the stranger whose invite you accepted might be a cop.

No, we are talking about government agents create fake profiles for the purpose of extracting information from people and granting access to the profile to other agents, and then calling it an "undercover operation." It is the equivalent of a government agent convincing someone to give the agent a key to their home, so that law enforcement personnel can wander through their house and look through their things.

It is as much of a privacy issue as an FBI agent going undercover as a babysitter would be. If it is just a technique for finding information on people who are already suspects in a crime, it is a prudent method for gathering evidence; but if and when the situation changes and the government starts using these tactics against random people, just to see if crimes are being committed, then it is a serious invasion of privacy.

"We're talking about government agents using Facebook or Twitter the exact same way that you or I would use it."

When I read the TOS for Facebook it said I was not allowed to supply false information, but this story says that the law enforcement personnel are doing just that. So they are not using Facebook just as you or I would use it.

As someone else pointed out, this isn't just the collection of data in aggregate that can be sorted through later.

This kind of data collection is (relative to other digital data gathering, at least) fairly labor-intensive. Nobody from the FBI is going to pretend to be your friend on Facebook unless your name has already come to their attention for some other reason. You're not worth their time otherwise.

Now, whether they're investigating you because you've committed a crime or because you're a communist is

What stops this process from being automated or performed en masse? There are chat bots that could carry on a conversation with a person long enough to convince the person to accept a friend request, and the government could then simply download the entire profile that the person posted -- and continue to receive updates, and all done automatically. It would not be trivial, but it is certainly conceivable that such an operation could be carried out by a large agency that employs expert programmers.

This kind of data collection is (relative to other digital data gathering, at least) fairly labor-intensive. Nobody from the FBI is going to pretend to be your friend on Facebook unless your name has already come to their attention for some other reason. You're not worth their time otherwise.

That's the way all government investigation should be. Unless they have a good reason to believe you have committed a crime, your name should never come up and data about you should never be gathered. If they do have

Heh, betterunixthanunix, did you know that if you buy a car with $20K in small, unmarked bills, the police will consider you a person of interest and start an investigation on you?

Did you know that if you are in a gang, there might be policeman around you that look like normal people? They call themselves "undercover agents".

Did you know that the "young lady" that is asking you if you "want to party" could actually be an undercover policeman? Yeah, he could actually be in drag, but it might also be a policewoman.

The things that you do in public are not private. You have no right to privacy in public places. If you don't want to tell people that you're dealing drugs at the Grateful Dead Look-a-like concert, don't publicize on FACEBOOK that you're dealing drugs at the Grateful Dead Look-a-like concert.

Had the GP said "the government should not be taking advantage of stupidity to catch criminals" your comment would make some sense. Since he did not say that, I must regard your comment as a knee-jerk emotional reaction. I saw nothing which indicated that the GP was an apologist for criminals.

In other words, it is possible to catch criminals without undermining civil rights. It is also possible to undermine civil rights without catching criminals. The desire that the police not violate or undermine c

Friending someone on MyFaceJournal isn't really any different than an undercover officer striking up a conversation with them while they're picking up something at their local convenience store. They're in public with no expectation of privacy.

> the government should not be taking advantage of stupidity to undermine our rights.

I agree. The classic example is coming to your door--they always ask "may we come in" instead of just speaking with you there, even if they're just there to ask a very quick question, because if you consent you waive your fourth amendment right to be free from search and seizure.

Actually, you don't. Inviting an officer or agent into your home doesn't not void your search and seizure rights. All it does is allow them to observe the area of the house you allowed them into. It's "plain site" only at that point. Until they have a warrant, they aren't allowed to snoop in closed off areas. However, once you've allowed them in, they are likely to ask or push for more access. You have your rights still, but you must exercise them.

You don't entirely waive them, it's true--but you do somewhat waive them. They can't, for example, open a closed container, but they can amble about the living area. Having consented to entry into the home makes your case against them significantly harder if they do find something, since you have to start arguing about the scope of consent.

Exactly. People who are stupid enough to fall for it deserve what they get.

This isn't the government going behind your back, putting you under covert surveillance. It's completely in the open. A friend of mine used to work for the MA state police, in the computer forensics unit. He was amazed at the number of gang members who would just openly accept his friend request on Facebook, which would lead to him quietly beavering away to figure out the social network of the gang, where they met, what they got up to. Sneaky? Perhaps, but not illegal.

Really, people are just plain stupid.

With all of the surveillance and wiretap capabilities they possess, the mandatory backdoors built into many telecommunications systems, and the willingness the feds have shown to use these without first obtaining warrants, I am almost surprised they bother doing this. It's old-fashioned policework, of the sort that seems to be going out of style as we keep approaching a surveillance society. It sounds like at least some of them recognize that when real crimes that harm real people are committed, no Orwell

The criminal "profession" has an intelligence bias. Most intelligent people who contemplate crime realize the profit isn't much better than working a day job if you want to do it in a way that there is a very minimal chance of getting caught. "Well, I could make a living stealing things, but in order to steal x I need to recon for y hours, buy z tools, only do it n times every month per area, and be cautious in every aspect of my life. Shit, why don't I just start my own business instead?"

The criminal "profession" has an intelligence bias. Most intelligent people who contemplate crime realize the profit isn't much better than working a day job if you want to do it in a way that there is a very minimal chance of getting caught.

Tell that to Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello or Meyer Lansky. I'm sure they'd be interested to know that running Organized Crime isn't as profitable as an honest job would have been.

Probably means that there's a shortage of real crooks like terrorists and spies, so the feds have to do something to justify their elephantine budgets and keep their bust-numbers high.

Hey, ICE? Hi, this is Agent Smith from the FBI and I'm calling to report a MySpace profile featuring a black guy with gold chains and a new car that he probably stole from some hapless old lady. Can you go pick 'him up for me? Warrants? Nah, if the judge asks just say that the guy's an illegal alien or he's downloading mus

Facebook is popular because its users believe that their information is not publicly available. Yes, it is a complete falsehood, but the reality of life is that most people do not realize just how public the information on Facebook really is, and that is why these sorts of activities are so problematic. We are supposed to live in a country where the government does not arbitrarily spy on its citizens, even for the purposes of law enforcement.

Why do people get so upset when they find out that H.R. departments are trying to comb MySpace or Facebook before hiring a candidate? Same idea, but simply a group trying to glean the data for a different purpose.

The thing is, yes - I fully realize law enforcement is going to make use of the tools available to them. If they can see my info on Facebook and they're interested in me, obviously they'll take a peek at it.

BUT, there's a danger here that comes by misinterpreting the data, too. For starters, who

I'd hazard a guess that law enforcement wouldn't move on people like that former girlfriend of yours based on what they found on her social networking. Like any interaction with the police, anything said can be used against you. It will not be used for you. If there is evidence of criminal action on your social network's of choice page, it will be used against you. If there is only shady, but not illegal, content they will keep investigating you. But it obviously isn't going to exonerate you.

Except that this is different, in that once an agent has "friended" you on Facebook, your profile becomes available to the entire investigative agency. If an agent meets me at the bar and engages me in conversation, they learn only as much as I tell them -- perhaps that is a significant amount, perhaps they can use that conversation to investigate me further, but they are not receiving a profile of my entire life, and they cannot continue questioning me when I am not around. It is the nature of round-the-

I've been spreading disinformation for years to keep burglars and data miners off of their game.That's great, but while there are many 'Jeff's in the world, and many 'Tom's as well, you are Sancho. Frank Gifford is not Sancho, neither is Scott Baio Sancho. You are Sancho. And really, that's all we need to know... you're hired!

Unless they become your friend, and then you invite them back to your 'crib' and give them a key to your front door. Maybe they become close enough of a 'friend' that you invite them to your next drug deal, where the other cops that are listening in over the hidden microphone learn the names of the other dealers and start surveillenc on them. Eventually, they map out your entire friend network and arrest everyone in one big bust.

Of course, that cost thousands of dollars to pull off and puts policemen in d

It is the nature of round-the-clock access to a person's profile and life, and the spillover into their friend's lives... that makes this a more intrusive form of investigation.

Go up to an agent or detective and tell him that you think his investigation into the private life of his murder or drug dealing suspect is too intrusive. See what he says. After he stops laughing, of course, you'll need to wait for that.

I would put forward that it's within their rights, as they are charged with the safety of society, to use any tools necessary to investigate crime. The fact that the suspect has to engage the agent and interact with them means it's fair play. It's when they are not privy to it that judicial oversight is needed to ensure that it warrants investigation.

The document... makes clear that US agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target's friends or relatives and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs, and video clips.

Is this private data that they've "hacked" into (a la Zuckerberg [businessinsider.com]), or is this a case of the feds reading whatever they found posted on the dude's wall or open Twitter page?

Some of it concerns "public" information -- that is, information that the user expects to be public -- but some of the techniques described involve "friending" a person under investigation, and then having access to their entire profile. It is not "hacking," but it has a similar effect.

This is not hacking any more than someone walking up to you on the street, asking you for your keys, then taking your car for a joyride is theft.

If someone asks for my keys under pretenses other than "I intend to take your car for a joyride", and then uses the keys to take my car for a joyride, it is theft (larceny) of the car. (It's also, in many jurisdictions, theft [false pretenses] with respect to the keys.)

So this probably isn't the analogy you want to use to make your argument.

You are correct. They aren't doing anything that you nor I couldn't do - besides having access to police records and placing people under arrest. The actual information gathering is pretty standard stuff.

I may have gone to highschool with someone who is now a known drug dealer. Now they can look at my profile and stuff if I have it public, they aren't stepping over any boundaries. If I don't have it public, they can't see it. They literally would have to imposter someone I know to get on my friends list (which is in fact illegal) - so I don't have to worry about that.

On the chance that they do look into it - it will be very obvious I have not associated with the person after investigating MY events

I may have gone to highschool with someone who is now a known drug dealer. Now they can look at my profile and stuff if I have it public, they aren't stepping over any boundaries.

There are state compulsory education laws. There's also the fact that you have little or no selection of high schools when you reside in a particular geographical area. Then there's the notion that you did not force that person to become a drug dealer, probably did not even know he was doing that, and in either case are not resp

There is nothing illegal against me investigating you or your friends.

Are you not concerned about that?

Law Enforcement Agencies are not going to waste their time creeping out on facebook unless they have some sort of lead. If you have an issue with keeping stuff Private your issue is with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc - not with the feds.

Why should a cop who is being deceptive while investigating one suspect suddenly be allowed to access people, perhaps 100's or 1000's who may or may not be involved in any way?

Are you saying an offline undercover cop should be a blind idiot and focus ONLY on the ONE person associated with selling drugs, and not the supplier of the drugs, or the purchasers? Then whats the point of going undercover?

This is no different. If you know a Drug Dealer, everyone the drug dealer associates with is suspect, that is just the way it works. Hey, the dealers wife might not know he deals drugs, she might be completely innocent, or she could be the brain behind the whole operation, regardless, th

Because, you know, people twitter "going downtown to cap off @bigjimmy then getting stromboli" or whatever... and like tweets really establish an alibi anyway. Maybe with geo-tagging, but even then that's suspect, for there is no reason to believe that the perp didn't give his phone to someone to go tweet something from somewhere else.

No, the tweet (or whatever) likely isn't proof, but it does given the authorities reason to investigate further. If you're a suspect, and answered questions one way, and posted to facebook that you were doing something completely different, its worth investigating the discrepancy. ie: You told the police you were home in bed, but you're friends' facebook pages all say you were out partying... well, its worth going to talk to your friends.

You're not thinking on the level of a criminal, bsDaemon. Face it, we're not talking the fairest and brightest of society here. We're talking about that species of human that has barely above being an evolutionary kickback. They're STUPID. We're talking about the sort of people that would kill Michael Jordan's father on the side of a lonely NC highway, hear and see the ensuing hoopla spread through the news, and THEN go around showing off his NBA championship ring.

So if they want to use my tweets to break alibis, does this mean I can make tweets to reinforce them? '8:00 in bed and going to sleep' '9:00 woke up to the sound of a gun shot in the distance, I hope Bob the snitch is okay' '9:15 Going downtown with Officers for a cup of coffee, they are so nice' '9:30 after officers read my tweets, they apologized for wasting my time and drove me home'

I don't see a problem as long as they are not doing anything that any other user can do. If they lie to you to get you to accept them as a friend, or browse public data, that is perfectly OK.

On the other hand, I would have problem if they get access to the database, or otherwise bypass the user-managed access control/privacy features. I would also have a problem if they developed a Facebook app and tricked a suspect into running it. (apps can have more access to your profile than friends do.)

We are not the baby boomer's SDS run by Marxist dogma by the way. Just wanted to get that out there before people start yelling commie. Mostly we act as a guard against the insane grabs of power and money by academic institutions that have been occurring at an alarming rate since the late 1990's. We are about as socialist on average as the socialist democrats are in Europe, even though we have some outliers.

We have had an online presence for years and the one thing we set out at the start was to be open so if infiltration happened it would be well documented. There are no closed email lists, no secret societies and no calls to violence or overthrowing of the government. However, that does not mean that we have not been spied upon [newsds.org] and we do take threats to our civil rights to assembly, speech and liberty seriously. What we worry about mostly is the threat of the government running counter intelligence programs against us like COUNTELPRO [wikipedia.org] in the 70's since the FBI and the US DOD have been linked to some instances of agent provocateur activity during the Bush years. So the question that any investigation of these acts by the government is when they stop being surveillance and start being about collecting data on honest citizens who surround a suspect and via police misconduct and prosecutorial witchhunts.

No. What you're referring to is *public information* if they can get to it through the normal user interface. Now, if they call up facebook and say "I want to see so and so's non-public photos", fine, it's a problem, they need a warrant.

But I'm tired of this nonsense where someone posts all kinds of crap on their facebook account, make it public (or allow "friends" to see it), and then act like it's not supposed to be view

Over recent years people, especially young people, have gradually become accoustomed to posting more and more information about themselve on teh interwebs. Teenagers in particular have become aclimatised to this lesser expectation of privacy - it's almost as if they need to post about an event to validate that they have experienced it (SS or it didn't happen).

Whether intentional or not, these poeple are being trained not to expect privacy for themselves or anyone else - aided by the media and modern celebra

Does anyone not realize that they are mining all the photos on Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, etc, for pictures of people, and cross-referencing them based on tags? Talk about a wealth of photos that can be used to definitively identify a person.

If you have been tagged on any photo on Facebook, most likely you are already in the Fed's database, as well as the ability to recognize your face as well. Walk anywhere near a camera, and those cameras can instantly use facial recognition to figure out your name, age, etc, simply based on freely available information from these social networks.

At that instant second when you pressed that button named "Publish", you waved away your privacy connected with this media/photos/whatever. No, privacy is not dead. You can't keep privacy if you are publishing something on Internet public resources.

look: if you make it public, its public. it can be abused. if you don't want it abused, don't make it public. and anything going over a wire to a wide open internet and not encrypted, is public

its really that simple. do you expect corporations or governments to act virtuous? it is YOUR job to protect your privacy. if your privacy is violated, its YOUR fault. no, really. the alternative is that, for whatever reason, you actually trust the sharks and wolves to protect you

Why should they need a warrant to see your publicly available profile? Why shouldn't they be able to invent a virtual identity to facilitate talking to a suspect or their friends online? How is that different from undercover work in the real world?

Why should they need a warrant to see your publicly available profile?

If they don't need a warrant to enter and search your home, to review your phone records or library records, to listen in on your calls or private conversations, or even to arrest you, it doesn't make sense that they'd need a warrant to look at your profile.

And before anyone flames me for warrant-less wiretapping by the NSA, that was an illegal act and they got burned hard for it.

Is that why warrantless wire-tapping continues?

FISA is still the law of the land. The PATRIOT Act is still the law of the land.

If you ever want to be chilled to the bone, read the PATRIOT Act. You can do it in just a few hours.

By the way, it's worth noting that the renewal of the PATRIOT Act was passed using the same type of "deem and pass" legislative maneuver that is now being used by the democrats in the House of Representatives to pass health care. Funny how it wasn't that big a deal back then. The argument is that the PATRIOT Act wasn't as big a deal as health reform.

Considering PATRIOT allows unidentifiable law enforcement agencies to arrest and detain you without identifying themselves or giving you any Miranda rights, I'm inclined to disagree. But that's just me.